Nokia 3210

Nokia's new 3210 is undoubtedly one of the most popular handsets with retailers at the moment. It's not one of the lightest phones around, weighing in at 150g, but it does have an impressive feature set for its £50 price.

For a start it has removable covers on both front and back, and Predictive Text Input for SMS (Short Messaging Service) entry. This means that you don't always have to cycle through the letters on each key to get the one you want, as the 3210 will intelligently guess which one you want.

Other value-adding features are a calculator and currency exchange, clock and alarm, selectable ringer/alert profiles, ring tone composer, 40 ringing tones, three games, up to 250 names in the phone book, various timers for call accounting, and many more. A picture messaging service is one of the SMS features, and allows you to send fun graphics to other 3210 users.

The 3210 has an internal antenna, making it sleeker than other phones, and it features EFR (Enhanced Full Rate) technology for better sound quality. Its display dynamically adjusts layout for best viewing, including features like full graphics and variable font size. Nokia claims an excellent standby time of five days, and a talk time of three hours from the included which is also impressive.

A mains charger is included which can rapid-charge the handset in just two and a half hours. Being a dual-band phone, you can receive service in 88 countries around the globe.

One feature the phone doesn't have is a silent vibrate mode, although it does have other discrete modes including a flashing message on the screen - not much use unless you're constantly looking at the phone. Mostly, the menus were easy to navigate and use with Nokia's usual four-button interface, but some of the options weren't well explained on screen.

Overall, we thought the 3210 was quite a good-looking phone and comfortable to use. And with the Xpress-on covers, your phone can be as individual as you are.